As long as it keeps being put on the back burner it'll never be developed into a working feature. Which is a shame as two good examples in the eyes of many have been done and can function as a base to build and refine from.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Now, some people are fine with this. “Nesters” are perfectly happy perpetually decorating an instanced space inside another instanced space with furniture and trophies, and OK with the fact that no-one will ever see it. But the players that want to show off are out of luck. Again, we have a system that only appeals to a small amount of people, making it vulnerable to being cut.
I do not understand the reasoning behind this. What keeps other people from visiting instanced houses from other people?
Unless the homes are part of the rest of the MMO and not tucked away somewhere, housing is pointless. It becomes a place to store some extra stuff and display trophies no one else sees.
Housing must be near where players adventure and meet up.
Housing in SWG was amazing. It's one of the things I miss most and one of the things that stands out in my mind as a favorite feature. It wasn't perfect. They could have implemented some common sense restrictions, like if you don't pay rent for a month you get auto pack up or something. I loved SWG housing though. My friends and I spent a lot of time at our houses and in our guild hall and cantina.
Will anyone ever make housing as good as SWG? I hope Fallen Earth does.
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.
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.
Having played DAoC before and after housing was instituted I still believe that housing is bad for a game's community unless you somehow incorporated into the main city or enable comms that are broadcast into the cities to also be available to those in housing. Don't get me wrong, I loved my house out in Dalton but I spent all my down time there. The city of Camelot used to be a hopping place to be where everyone hung out when they weren't involved in rvr or leveling. When something changed in new frontiers, most of your population was easily accessible because they were usually in the same place. Once housing came out we had zero reason to go to town. If you were in a decent sized alliance you generally heard about it through those chat channels, but without better comms, most of your players never knew what was happening until it was too late to do anything about it. If your game is pve only I don't see where housing is going to be a problem, but if your game has a pvp system where having available players on the spot is necessary, housing should only be considered if the comms system in your game is top notch.
Agreed. I think we both hold the same stance. It's not that housing is categorically bad but that several implementations were poorly done.
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
Now, some people are fine with this. “Nesters” are perfectly happy perpetually decorating an instanced space inside another instanced space with furniture and trophies, and OK with the fact that no-one will ever see it. But the players that want to show off are out of luck. Again, we have a system that only appeals to a small amount of people, making it vulnerable to being cut.
I do not understand the reasoning behind this. What keeps other people from visiting instanced houses from other people?
Nothing. Puzzle Pirates' housing is instanced and people are regularly visiting each other's homes.Fromthe author's articles, it seems he's more familiar with the past two or three years of MMOs and not directly familiar with much of anything that was done before that. Makes for an ineresting article as housing has been pretty stagnant and uninspired for years now.
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
As long as it keeps being put on the back burner it'll never be developed into a working feature.
It seems like that is the main issue. I think a lot of devs look at housing as a place for characters to live and it becomes a roadblock because 1) that's not what players want and 2) they'd have to design a massive sim component to their game to make a "living space" or "shelter space" even remotely attractive to the playerbase.
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
SWG to date has had the best Housing system in my opinion. Granted, I have not played since NGE (bastards!), so my opinion is all based on that.
A couple of misconceptions have been stated:
First, you could not build houses next to a static city. There were areas that were no build zones, including about 250m from a static city.
Second, Player housing was not just about showing off your trophies. You actually got a bonus to crafting inside of your house as it is the only place (besides guild halls) that you could place player crafted crafting stations that had stats high enough to be worth crafting great items.
Third, these were not just player housing units to play the Sims with. You actually had harvesting equipment that you would go out and place on areas depending on your needs for crafting. Not only did they have a random node % through each planet, but they had needs for each harvester (money for upkeep, energy needed to run it). You would literally need a factory to create things (like the housing maker).
It was amazing to see cities spring up (before city zones were even implemented into the game) by players and guilds. Then they implemented cities into the game where these houses could form into a major city with shuttleports (which allowed for faster travel to and from areas with long distance running/speederbiking). Soon, you would find malls of vendors with much needed stuff and cities with missions and vendors right near where you were going for quests etc. There were only allowed a specific number of cities on each planet, which was a FCFS system.
Housing took $$ for upkeep. If you didn't pay your upkeep, you got your house packed up. Now, some people actually put a crap load of money into their house and that is why it was still there after a player quit.
All in all, the system was beyond amazing and NO ONE has come close to that which is a shame. Sure, it had some minor issues (make a person have to visit their house every 30 days or its gone would have helped). But the fact that NO ONE has come close to this in all these years is sad. It shows a lack of imagination IMHO.
Heya everyone, not a casual poster on mmorpg.com but hey, this subject is very dear to my heart.
first off, SWG housing was best, other variations be instanced or semi isntanced like daoc are just a waste of developers time... they do serve some purpose but use of this feature is extremley limited.
The amazing thing done about SWG which went in pair with the outstanding crafting system, was the fact that you had your favourite cook and your favourite armourer and dancer and weaponsmith etc. It gave a real world feal like no other mmo. So when all your food stocks are gone (very usefull buffs from food back in the days, not sure bout now), you would go to a tiny house close to Tusken fort and pick up a couple crates! there was no international immediate delivery system...
some planets did in fact have a problem with housing like tatooine and the other one(main one, people who played will remember) so to get out of the city on the bike it was not that comfortable, but all in all imho it was not that bad, i mean it did look like messy suburbs which any real city has)
So if they do the housing system, they need to do it right, or just abandon the whole damn thing, having a room that would ever be visited by you is like not having a room...
P.S. I was not a very successful crafter and mostly used my crafts myself, but i did run an increadibly popular Crystals and Peals terminal, so my tiny vendor would bring up to 50 visitors a day to my guilds city)
my only experience in player housing was when i played daoc. i enjoyed my "little house" on the priarie so to speak. but it seemed to "isolate" me from social actvity. i was a high level crafter so i used my house to sell my crafts. my house was out in the boonies so to speak due to what others have posted was the problem of inactive accounts using up prime real estate locations. if i could redesign daoc housing i would have it revolve around GUILD housing. i enjoyed the social aspects of being in a guild. as a guild member you would be entitled to a plot of land surrounding your guild villa and be able to build and decorate a small house to your own individual taste. a strong sense of "community" would be fostered. i enjoyed the fact that my fellow guild members frequented my "home" in the game.
live long and prosper strength and honor
if urgent do it yourself if you have time-delegate it if you have forever-form a committee
my only experience in player housing was when i played daoc. i enjoyed my "little house" on the priarie so to speak. but it seemed to "isolate" me from social actvity. i was a high level crafter so i used my house to sell my crafts. my house was out in the boonies so to speak due to what others have posted was the problem of inactive accounts using up prime real estate locations. if i could redesign daoc housing i would have it revolve around GUILD housing. i enjoyed the social aspects of being in a guild. as a guild member you would be entitled to a plot of land surrounding your guild villa and be able to build and decorate a small house to your own individual taste. a strong sense of "community" would be fostered. i enjoyed the fact that my fellow guild members frequented my "home" in the game.
I would agree with this as an option. If you could have a guild hall (a nice size one whether it be a Castle or what not) and then within a set limit of space (maybe based on max size a guild could be and then -space for less populated guilds with the ability to stretch to max size) with housing "plots". The key here would need to be the ability to put the house in any direction you want the front door facing (n,s,e,w) and to have a selection of housing. Whether it be 3 different types for say officers of the guild, then 3 different types to choose from for members, etc.
Then you would need to allow for furnishing (outside decoration would be great as well if possible on the house), etc within the house which would be viewable by people that could stop by.
Along this line, it would be great to have the ability to "spruce up" your guild "city" with things like fountains, NPC's (maybe for repeatable quests) trainers, transportation hotspot, etc.
And either have the ability to have your own vendor in your house and/or the guild hall to have a guild vendor that would allow folks to buy from the guild crafters etc.
IMHO, I think the bazaar (AH) has become the platform that is really taking away from social interaction. Too much, you are seeing games that are becoming about the start-->finish themepark with as little interaction as possible with anything that is part of RPG. I do not know when it happened, but MMO's seem to be moving towards a FPS like game with end game being what everyone rushes to, instead of a living, breathing world with interaction and social content. An MMO shouldn't ever have an end of game imho. I don't believe that the MMORPG was meant to become a MW2 or CoD template. But it does appear as that is the way things are heading.
I personally feel like by reading posts etc, that people are coming over from these FPS games and bringing their names (RoxxorzBoxxorz), thier mentality (HAHA NOOB, I OWNZ JU!), and their ADD (I DONT WANT ANYTHING THAT DOESN"T GET ME INTO END GAME QUiCK!) which is destroying (imho) the very foundations of what MMORPG's where in the first place. Gone are the days of social gatherings unless its a Dev event that gives up stuff to ppl, Gone are the days of Guilds hanging out at their guild hall and/or city holding events and inviting folks. Gone are the weddings that took place. We have replaced all of this with pvp battlegrounds, end game endless RAIDS, dungeons, etc.
I remember in SWG when things started to go down hill. When the first Jedi hit the servers and everyone figured out that if you grinded out all the professions, visited all the POI, you could unlock a jedi! So everyone turned into mindless zombies grinding through every profession and we ended up with heal bots, buff bots, and mindless grinding of players when the game use to have just a laid back social fun experience.
Someone should bring out a game more in line with the sandbox style of the original design of SWG, then you get some numbers and loyalty. I do not want my MMO to be like Dragon Age. A start, a path, An End. Content is needed as always. But you need to balance the rope of content and social content as well.
Sorry. I think this whole implementing-of-player-housing-thing being as difficult as reconstructing the Giza plateau somewhere in Nevada, is a total red herring. The first Neocron had this years and years ago. It blended seamlessly into the background atmosphere, it let you do a little customization, and you could even invite friends in. And there were multiple levels of housing available so you could upgrade if you wanted. And if I remember right, you could have multiple houses at once, each in a different zone. I'm not sure about that because I never had enough money scraped together to try it.
This isn't rocket science. The reason it's not being implemented frequently is because most people that do want it, will still play a game without it it, while many who don't want it will moan and curse if it's in there, decrying the fact that it's funneling time and resources from the important game features -- namely the one they most want. And a small number of those detractors will not buy the game because of the inclusion of player housing, just on general principle. I mean, player housing is for pussy RPers, right dawg? If it's in there, it must be a game for pussies so I ain't playin' it.
Of all the design elements I've seen out there, this one seems to bring out the worst of the vitriol from it's opponents. And as with the squeaky wheel, those that wail loudest are usually the ones that get heard.
It has little to do with complexity. It's just that developers know they can away with leaving it out and it won't affect sales. Which of course, doesn't stop the publishers promoting it's inclusion all the way up to release time, then having it infinitely pushed back on the development timetable. I mean, WoW had this in the works at launch and they still haven't refused to man up and drop it completely. It gives that little glimmer of hope to those that care that they may yet see this little gem.
Originally posted by Unlight I mean, WoW had this in the works at launch and they still haven't refused to man up and drop it completely. It gives that little glimmer of hope to those that care that they may yet see this little gem. But they never will. Not in WoW at least.
What are you talking about? Blizzard has always been against player/guild housing. They issue a statement every year reminding people they are against housing and why.
Also, perhaps the player housing LotRO has been neglected lately because Turbine has been busy developing the core game. You know, adding content and features the majority of the player base will utilize and subscribe to the game for.
New lands and new dungeons get people to subscribe to MMOs, new tables or new wallpaper not so much.
If 10 year old MMOs have it. It is doable. The problem I see here is the human condition, laziness. If player housing is not planned initially it will never make it into an MMO after launch.
Asheron's Call has it
SWG has it
Anarchy Online has it
It has been done and players still miss it every time a new MMO launches people mention it. You just get these new generation programmers and producers who pass it up as a vanity item and never consider the customer's wants-and-desires when considering player housing.
Also, perhaps the player housing LotRO has been neglected lately because Turbine has been busy developing the core game. You know, adding content and features the majority of the player base will utilize and subscribe to the game for. New lands and new dungeons get people to subscribe to MMOs, new tables or new wallpaper not so much.
LOTRO's housing hasn't been neglected lately, it was neglected from the moment it was implemented. Turbine only made a half-arsed attempt at it and then stopped developing it completely after it was implemented.
The reason they added it was because there was that much of a demand for it; the game attracted a lot of roleplayers and others who dabble in it. Barely anyone actually uses it now though because Turbine did such an awful job of it, and that's why they barely support the system now.
To put it simply: the majority of players actually DID want the system, they just didn't want Turbine's joke of an attempt at it.
This is a topic I have thought about at great length. Player housing is a great feature that I enjoyed immensely in games like UO and SWG in the past. However, I think the way that it was done in both of those games is not ideal. Having every inch of the game world covered in player house ghettos is a huge immersion killer for me and I know many others feel the same...
My solution would be a mix between the expensive limited space housing model and the instanced housing model. I think cheap player housing should be made available to everyone via instancing. I think this can be done in such a way that it seems natural and does not kill immersion. In a sci-fi game, this can be done with apartment buildings or crew quarters on a ship. You simply take an elevator to your apartment. Other players can visit you there at any time by grouping with you and taking the same elevator that you do. This can also be done in fantasy style games via portals and/or possibly elevators if technology exists in the game (ie WOW's gnomes).
At the same time, there should be a limited number of non-instanced player houses spread across the game world where the really dedicated players can show off their decorating skills and trophies. These limited houses should be prohibitively expensive to maintain so that only the most dedicated can possibly afford to keep them.
Finally, I think that guild housing locations should also be spread around the map. These should not be instanced and should also be difficult to maintain so that only the most dedicated and successful guilds can have a physical headquarters in the game world.
Ultimately I think pretty much everyone can be satisfied with a system such as this. Thoughts?
As Justin points out, non-instanced player housing is a complex system to build and get right. It causes a host of problems - of which UO and SWG experienced all of them - such as lack of availability of land, urban sprawl, neighbourhood relationship issues and escalating costs. Much like real estate in real life, come to think of it. Everyone wants the right location, which is usually near a hub and that adds to the server load of that area. Player housing is a nice idea, but it is one beset with design issues and I completely understand why most MMO developers put it on the backburner.
This is absolute nonsense.
I played on one of the most populated SWG servers (Starsider) from launch until early 2009. I was the mayor of two separate player cities and placed well over 40 stand alone houses on multiple planets across my various accounts.
The was no land shortage, urban sprawl, or neighborhood relationship issues and escalating costs, whatever that means. The house prices were set by player architects and were quite cheap. Urban sprawl is subjective, but there was never any kind of a land shortage. Sure, if you wanted to place your house next to Amidala's lake retreat, someone had probably beat you to the prime spot. But your post makes it sound like finding a spot to place your house was difficult, and that's just totally inaccurate.
The only design issues that beset player housing is developer laziness and producer apathy.
Now, some people are fine with this. “Nesters” are perfectly happy perpetually decorating an instanced space inside another instanced space with furniture and trophies, and OK with the fact that no-one will ever see it. But the players that want to show off are out of luck. Again, we have a system that only appeals to a small amount of people, making it vulnerable to being cut.
I do not understand the reasoning behind this. What keeps other people from visiting instanced houses from other people?
Well, of late instanced housing has a requirement that the owner must add you to a friends list so that you may gain entry. This prevents randon player X who would like to look at different home interiors to gain some idea on what to do with their own home. I don't know if you played UO or SWG but in those two games (which in my very biased view are the examples devs should be looking to build upon) any random player could walk into a house and look around. Now, home owners had the option to prevent folks not on a home list (which they could setup through house terminal) entry, but by and large most folks left their homes open to the public.
Admittedly I haven't played every MMO out there, but the majority of the AAA games that I have played that used instanced housing are like this.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
As long as it keeps being put on the back burner it'll never be developed into a working feature.
It seems like that is the main issue. I think a lot of devs look at housing as a place for characters to live and it becomes a roadblock because 1) that's not what players want and 2) they'd have to design a massive sim component to their game to make a "living space" or "shelter space" even remotely attractive to the playerbase.
I guess since I don't know what you mean by "a place for characters to live" at this point I can't agree with your #1. I certainly do want my house to be a spot I can live in. By that I mean decorate it as I think fitting for my character. I'd like to have systems built into the game such that I can throw a party there for friends or craft appropriate items or use it as a place to store my "stuff". This could be what you mean in #2 in which case I look at 1 and 2 as the same.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Homes, communities, player cities make MMORPGs feel like an online world more than just a game. I love them.. It's fun watching all the social dynamics in those kinds of online worlds.
Also, perhaps the player housing LotRO has been neglected lately because Turbine has been busy developing the core game. You know, adding content and features the majority of the player base will utilize and subscribe to the game for. New lands and new dungeons get people to subscribe to MMOs, new tables or new wallpaper not so much.
LOTRO's housing hasn't been neglected lately, it was neglected from the moment it was implemented. Turbine only made a half-arsed attempt at it and then stopped developing it completely after it was implemented.
The reason they added it was because there was that much of a demand for it; the game attracted a lot of roleplayers and others who dabble in it. Barely anyone actually uses it now though because Turbine did such an awful job of it, and that's why they barely support the system now.
To put it simply: the majority of players actually DID want the system, they just didn't want Turbine's joke of an attempt at it.
Turbine had a good idea, on paper only. Instanced neighborhoods letting players tweak their house yard was flawed at the core due to the instanced zones.
The hook system made it worse, but this way it seriously limits the # of items that can be placed in the houses and so the DB load.
However you can't deny they are adding new items to be placed into the hooks from time to time. But that won't revive their housing system that has over 51% houses locked down due to failure to pay upkeep.
Sorry i didn't bother to read all the replys, but i want to present my solution (sorry if it was already posted).
What i think would work, would be to have dweling disttrict in the city. The whole distric would be instanced multiple times to accomodate many houses. One instance represent one district. Upon entering you choose what district you want to enter. Then there is a place where houses can be build - can be shown off, and looked by other players. In case that player population grows new instances are being created. (as if new districts were build around the city.
Each instance would have some NPC building at the begining to make it more believable and to introduce some shrines, shops and whatnot. Players could also build shops and have npcs rented to work there as clerks.
Howeversome system would be needed to clean the city once in a while from players that are no longer playing. That could be made so you need to pay rent to have your house. You coud pay it with ingame money preferably, and when you do not prolong your rent because you are not logging for months, then the house is rented to someone else, whoever is wiling to pay highest rent.
That could introduce some real estate market (fun!). Probably houses in the earliest districts would be most valuable and prestigious - so the city would have rich districts, poor districts etc.
Depending on a game you would be allowed to tresspass or not into someones house interiors. Or it could be that house interiors are next level of instances, where player can customize them as he wants, and decide who does he invite inside or not.
That would also solve the problem with users not logging in for a long time. Users who are not paing their rent get their house instance unlinked from the rented house, and when they resubscribe and pay rent, their house interiors are rebound to some house that is avaliable at the time. So players wouldnt lose their belongings.
In some more advanced sheme houses could be customized both from inside and outside. Havinf house build extra floors, towers, etc. would create more space in the inside instance.
Ok, i could go like this forever, so i better stop now.
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. [...] 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. [...] 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.
I'm totally agreeing! It is anchoring people in the world (even if it is only a background scenery to kill mobs in, housing is still "your" space you can influence and interact with beyond that) in my opinion. And those who are attracted by this feature strongest are a special auditory.
In some ways I believe that the Bartle system of achiever, explorer etc. is solid but another system of lets say "customizer/decorator, crafter, grinder, out-maxer, chatter, explorer, dabbler, competitor" is more useful when planning for an auditory.
Played: Pretty much any fantasy MMO, some did not even make it to release ... Favorites: UO, EQ2, Vanguard, Wurm Online, Salem, ESO, Creativerse Playing: ESO, Creativerse, Guild Wars 2 Anticipating: (sigh) ... maybe Ashes of Creation
From what I have seen the first MMO to do it right will have a big time home run. A whole lot of people are getting tired of the lazy way most MMOs are developed. Make a map...make some gear....make the people PVP so we don't have to bother with AI etc.
Only to have your personal gear to upgrade is very limiting. There is also a large portion of the playerbase that enjoys crafting and other similar types of things. Being able to have a persistant personal structure in a game that you or others could change and add on to with crafted items and drops etc would be huge for a lot of people. They are tired of grinding for gears and getting ganked all the time.
I am not saying it would be the easiest thing to do, but done correctly and with the right sense of community built in would grab more market share and payoff for the investors. With the flood of online games that are basically gank fests it is soon going to be about impossible to make a profit with that model. Especially because most of us gankers would rather just play an online FPS game to get our headshot fixes.......
when it comes to the construction part of housing i really prefer the idea of 'horizons' (nowadays known as istaria: chronicles of the gifted).
first of all there where a lot of building spots. some formed a village, few were at locations near the higher tier resources and whole islands only for a guild. every week an account could bid on one of the free building spots. the base-amount of ingame gold you have to bid depended on the location and the size of a building spot . if you were lucky you get the spot you wanted. bad system, but nevermind.
once you owned your own building spot you could open the architecture menue and had acess to a lot of building options. over 200 diffrent things you could add to your plot starting with the basis like a house, a blacksmith shop with all the tools for crafting like an anvil, silos to store your resources and ending with decorations like trees, fountains, gardenpaths, hedges and so on. with the architecture menue and window you could place all these things virtualy on your building spot and with the 1 degree rotation option everywhere you like to see it. as long you were in the menue you had a complete view of how your building-ground will look like, when its done. once you were satisfied with your architecture you saved it and ... ups ... no buildings or trees on my ground? only some construction sites?
well, in 'horizons' nearly everthing was playercrafted, even the highest and best equipment, so there were extra crafting schools like mason or carpenter. it took me about 3 months to get my building-ground done. some things i was able to do on my own, but for a lot of things i paid other players with ingame gold for the jobs. and belive me, to 'craft' such a building-ground took a lot of resources.
p.s.: its years ago since i had a view into horizons, so i do not know how actual the informations are.
Comments
As long as it keeps being put on the back burner it'll never be developed into a working feature. Which is a shame as two good examples in the eyes of many have been done and can function as a base to build and refine from.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
Now, some people are fine with this. “Nesters” are perfectly happy perpetually decorating an instanced space inside another instanced space with furniture and trophies, and OK with the fact that no-one will ever see it. But the players that want to show off are out of luck. Again, we have a system that only appeals to a small amount of people, making it vulnerable to being cut.
I do not understand the reasoning behind this. What keeps other people from visiting instanced houses from other people?
--
Delanor
Unless the homes are part of the rest of the MMO and not tucked away somewhere, housing is pointless. It becomes a place to store some extra stuff and display trophies no one else sees.
Housing must be near where players adventure and meet up.
Housing in SWG was amazing. It's one of the things I miss most and one of the things that stands out in my mind as a favorite feature. It wasn't perfect. They could have implemented some common sense restrictions, like if you don't pay rent for a month you get auto pack up or something. I loved SWG housing though. My friends and I spent a lot of time at our houses and in our guild hall and cantina.
Will anyone ever make housing as good as SWG? I hope Fallen Earth does.
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.
Having played DAoC before and after housing was instituted I still believe that housing is bad for a game's community unless you somehow incorporated into the main city or enable comms that are broadcast into the cities to also be available to those in housing. Don't get me wrong, I loved my house out in Dalton but I spent all my down time there. The city of Camelot used to be a hopping place to be where everyone hung out when they weren't involved in rvr or leveling. When something changed in new frontiers, most of your population was easily accessible because they were usually in the same place. Once housing came out we had zero reason to go to town. If you were in a decent sized alliance you generally heard about it through those chat channels, but without better comms, most of your players never knew what was happening until it was too late to do anything about it. If your game is pve only I don't see where housing is going to be a problem, but if your game has a pvp system where having available players on the spot is necessary, housing should only be considered if the comms system in your game is top notch.
Agreed. I think we both hold the same stance. It's not that housing is categorically bad but that several implementations were poorly done.
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
Nothing. Puzzle Pirates' housing is instanced and people are regularly visiting each other's homes.Fromthe author's articles, it seems he's more familiar with the past two or three years of MMOs and not directly familiar with much of anything that was done before that. Makes for an ineresting article as housing has been pretty stagnant and uninspired for years now.
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
It seems like that is the main issue. I think a lot of devs look at housing as a place for characters to live and it becomes a roadblock because 1) that's not what players want and 2) they'd have to design a massive sim component to their game to make a "living space" or "shelter space" even remotely attractive to the playerbase.
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
SWG to date has had the best Housing system in my opinion. Granted, I have not played since NGE (bastards!), so my opinion is all based on that.
A couple of misconceptions have been stated:
First, you could not build houses next to a static city. There were areas that were no build zones, including about 250m from a static city.
Second, Player housing was not just about showing off your trophies. You actually got a bonus to crafting inside of your house as it is the only place (besides guild halls) that you could place player crafted crafting stations that had stats high enough to be worth crafting great items.
Third, these were not just player housing units to play the Sims with. You actually had harvesting equipment that you would go out and place on areas depending on your needs for crafting. Not only did they have a random node % through each planet, but they had needs for each harvester (money for upkeep, energy needed to run it). You would literally need a factory to create things (like the housing maker).
It was amazing to see cities spring up (before city zones were even implemented into the game) by players and guilds. Then they implemented cities into the game where these houses could form into a major city with shuttleports (which allowed for faster travel to and from areas with long distance running/speederbiking). Soon, you would find malls of vendors with much needed stuff and cities with missions and vendors right near where you were going for quests etc. There were only allowed a specific number of cities on each planet, which was a FCFS system.
Housing took $$ for upkeep. If you didn't pay your upkeep, you got your house packed up. Now, some people actually put a crap load of money into their house and that is why it was still there after a player quit.
All in all, the system was beyond amazing and NO ONE has come close to that which is a shame. Sure, it had some minor issues (make a person have to visit their house every 30 days or its gone would have helped). But the fact that NO ONE has come close to this in all these years is sad. It shows a lack of imagination IMHO.
Heya everyone, not a casual poster on mmorpg.com but hey, this subject is very dear to my heart.
first off, SWG housing was best, other variations be instanced or semi isntanced like daoc are just a waste of developers time... they do serve some purpose but use of this feature is extremley limited.
The amazing thing done about SWG which went in pair with the outstanding crafting system, was the fact that you had your favourite cook and your favourite armourer and dancer and weaponsmith etc. It gave a real world feal like no other mmo. So when all your food stocks are gone (very usefull buffs from food back in the days, not sure bout now), you would go to a tiny house close to Tusken fort and pick up a couple crates! there was no international immediate delivery system...
some planets did in fact have a problem with housing like tatooine and the other one(main one, people who played will remember) so to get out of the city on the bike it was not that comfortable, but all in all imho it was not that bad, i mean it did look like messy suburbs which any real city has)
So if they do the housing system, they need to do it right, or just abandon the whole damn thing, having a room that would ever be visited by you is like not having a room...
P.S. I was not a very successful crafter and mostly used my crafts myself, but i did run an increadibly popular Crystals and Peals terminal, so my tiny vendor would bring up to 50 visitors a day to my guilds city)
my only experience in player housing was when i played daoc. i enjoyed my "little house" on the priarie so to speak. but it seemed to "isolate" me from social actvity. i was a high level crafter so i used my house to sell my crafts. my house was out in the boonies so to speak due to what others have posted was the problem of inactive accounts using up prime real estate locations. if i could redesign daoc housing i would have it revolve around GUILD housing. i enjoyed the social aspects of being in a guild. as a guild member you would be entitled to a plot of land surrounding your guild villa and be able to build and decorate a small house to your own individual taste. a strong sense of "community" would be fostered. i enjoyed the fact that my fellow guild members frequented my "home" in the game.
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I would agree with this as an option. If you could have a guild hall (a nice size one whether it be a Castle or what not) and then within a set limit of space (maybe based on max size a guild could be and then -space for less populated guilds with the ability to stretch to max size) with housing "plots". The key here would need to be the ability to put the house in any direction you want the front door facing (n,s,e,w) and to have a selection of housing. Whether it be 3 different types for say officers of the guild, then 3 different types to choose from for members, etc.
Then you would need to allow for furnishing (outside decoration would be great as well if possible on the house), etc within the house which would be viewable by people that could stop by.
Along this line, it would be great to have the ability to "spruce up" your guild "city" with things like fountains, NPC's (maybe for repeatable quests) trainers, transportation hotspot, etc.
And either have the ability to have your own vendor in your house and/or the guild hall to have a guild vendor that would allow folks to buy from the guild crafters etc.
IMHO, I think the bazaar (AH) has become the platform that is really taking away from social interaction. Too much, you are seeing games that are becoming about the start-->finish themepark with as little interaction as possible with anything that is part of RPG. I do not know when it happened, but MMO's seem to be moving towards a FPS like game with end game being what everyone rushes to, instead of a living, breathing world with interaction and social content. An MMO shouldn't ever have an end of game imho. I don't believe that the MMORPG was meant to become a MW2 or CoD template. But it does appear as that is the way things are heading.
I personally feel like by reading posts etc, that people are coming over from these FPS games and bringing their names (RoxxorzBoxxorz), thier mentality (HAHA NOOB, I OWNZ JU!), and their ADD (I DONT WANT ANYTHING THAT DOESN"T GET ME INTO END GAME QUiCK!) which is destroying (imho) the very foundations of what MMORPG's where in the first place. Gone are the days of social gatherings unless its a Dev event that gives up stuff to ppl, Gone are the days of Guilds hanging out at their guild hall and/or city holding events and inviting folks. Gone are the weddings that took place. We have replaced all of this with pvp battlegrounds, end game endless RAIDS, dungeons, etc.
I remember in SWG when things started to go down hill. When the first Jedi hit the servers and everyone figured out that if you grinded out all the professions, visited all the POI, you could unlock a jedi! So everyone turned into mindless zombies grinding through every profession and we ended up with heal bots, buff bots, and mindless grinding of players when the game use to have just a laid back social fun experience.
Someone should bring out a game more in line with the sandbox style of the original design of SWG, then you get some numbers and loyalty. I do not want my MMO to be like Dragon Age. A start, a path, An End. Content is needed as always. But you need to balance the rope of content and social content as well.
Sorry. I think this whole implementing-of-player-housing-thing being as difficult as reconstructing the Giza plateau somewhere in Nevada, is a total red herring. The first Neocron had this years and years ago. It blended seamlessly into the background atmosphere, it let you do a little customization, and you could even invite friends in. And there were multiple levels of housing available so you could upgrade if you wanted. And if I remember right, you could have multiple houses at once, each in a different zone. I'm not sure about that because I never had enough money scraped together to try it.
This isn't rocket science. The reason it's not being implemented frequently is because most people that do want it, will still play a game without it it, while many who don't want it will moan and curse if it's in there, decrying the fact that it's funneling time and resources from the important game features -- namely the one they most want. And a small number of those detractors will not buy the game because of the inclusion of player housing, just on general principle. I mean, player housing is for pussy RPers, right dawg? If it's in there, it must be a game for pussies so I ain't playin' it.
Of all the design elements I've seen out there, this one seems to bring out the worst of the vitriol from it's opponents. And as with the squeaky wheel, those that wail loudest are usually the ones that get heard.
It has little to do with complexity. It's just that developers know they can away with leaving it out and it won't affect sales. Which of course, doesn't stop the publishers promoting it's inclusion all the way up to release time, then having it infinitely pushed back on the development timetable. I mean, WoW had this in the works at launch and they still haven't refused to man up and drop it completely. It gives that little glimmer of hope to those that care that they may yet see this little gem.
But they never will. Not in WoW at least.
Also, perhaps the player housing LotRO has been neglected lately because Turbine has been busy developing the core game. You know, adding content and features the majority of the player base will utilize and subscribe to the game for.
New lands and new dungeons get people to subscribe to MMOs, new tables or new wallpaper not so much.
If 10 year old MMOs have it. It is doable. The problem I see here is the human condition, laziness. If player housing is not planned initially it will never make it into an MMO after launch.
Asheron's Call has it
SWG has it
Anarchy Online has it
It has been done and players still miss it every time a new MMO launches people mention it. You just get these new generation programmers and producers who pass it up as a vanity item and never consider the customer's wants-and-desires when considering player housing.
LOTRO's housing hasn't been neglected lately, it was neglected from the moment it was implemented. Turbine only made a half-arsed attempt at it and then stopped developing it completely after it was implemented.
The reason they added it was because there was that much of a demand for it; the game attracted a lot of roleplayers and others who dabble in it. Barely anyone actually uses it now though because Turbine did such an awful job of it, and that's why they barely support the system now.
To put it simply: the majority of players actually DID want the system, they just didn't want Turbine's joke of an attempt at it.
Great article Justin.
This is a topic I have thought about at great length. Player housing is a great feature that I enjoyed immensely in games like UO and SWG in the past. However, I think the way that it was done in both of those games is not ideal. Having every inch of the game world covered in player house ghettos is a huge immersion killer for me and I know many others feel the same...
My solution would be a mix between the expensive limited space housing model and the instanced housing model. I think cheap player housing should be made available to everyone via instancing. I think this can be done in such a way that it seems natural and does not kill immersion. In a sci-fi game, this can be done with apartment buildings or crew quarters on a ship. You simply take an elevator to your apartment. Other players can visit you there at any time by grouping with you and taking the same elevator that you do. This can also be done in fantasy style games via portals and/or possibly elevators if technology exists in the game (ie WOW's gnomes).
At the same time, there should be a limited number of non-instanced player houses spread across the game world where the really dedicated players can show off their decorating skills and trophies. These limited houses should be prohibitively expensive to maintain so that only the most dedicated can possibly afford to keep them.
Finally, I think that guild housing locations should also be spread around the map. These should not be instanced and should also be difficult to maintain so that only the most dedicated and successful guilds can have a physical headquarters in the game world.
Ultimately I think pretty much everyone can be satisfied with a system such as this. Thoughts?
This is absolute nonsense.
I played on one of the most populated SWG servers (Starsider) from launch until early 2009. I was the mayor of two separate player cities and placed well over 40 stand alone houses on multiple planets across my various accounts.
The was no land shortage, urban sprawl, or neighborhood relationship issues and escalating costs, whatever that means. The house prices were set by player architects and were quite cheap. Urban sprawl is subjective, but there was never any kind of a land shortage. Sure, if you wanted to place your house next to Amidala's lake retreat, someone had probably beat you to the prime spot. But your post makes it sound like finding a spot to place your house was difficult, and that's just totally inaccurate.
The only design issues that beset player housing is developer laziness and producer apathy.
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Well, of late instanced housing has a requirement that the owner must add you to a friends list so that you may gain entry. This prevents randon player X who would like to look at different home interiors to gain some idea on what to do with their own home. I don't know if you played UO or SWG but in those two games (which in my very biased view are the examples devs should be looking to build upon) any random player could walk into a house and look around. Now, home owners had the option to prevent folks not on a home list (which they could setup through house terminal) entry, but by and large most folks left their homes open to the public.
Admittedly I haven't played every MMO out there, but the majority of the AAA games that I have played that used instanced housing are like this.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
It seems like that is the main issue. I think a lot of devs look at housing as a place for characters to live and it becomes a roadblock because 1) that's not what players want and 2) they'd have to design a massive sim component to their game to make a "living space" or "shelter space" even remotely attractive to the playerbase.
I guess since I don't know what you mean by "a place for characters to live" at this point I can't agree with your #1. I certainly do want my house to be a spot I can live in. By that I mean decorate it as I think fitting for my character. I'd like to have systems built into the game such that I can throw a party there for friends or craft appropriate items or use it as a place to store my "stuff". This could be what you mean in #2 in which case I look at 1 and 2 as the same.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
Homes, communities, player cities make MMORPGs feel like an online world more than just a game. I love them.. It's fun watching all the social dynamics in those kinds of online worlds.
LOTRO's housing hasn't been neglected lately, it was neglected from the moment it was implemented. Turbine only made a half-arsed attempt at it and then stopped developing it completely after it was implemented.
The reason they added it was because there was that much of a demand for it; the game attracted a lot of roleplayers and others who dabble in it. Barely anyone actually uses it now though because Turbine did such an awful job of it, and that's why they barely support the system now.
To put it simply: the majority of players actually DID want the system, they just didn't want Turbine's joke of an attempt at it.
Turbine had a good idea, on paper only. Instanced neighborhoods letting players tweak their house yard was flawed at the core due to the instanced zones.
The hook system made it worse, but this way it seriously limits the # of items that can be placed in the houses and so the DB load.
However you can't deny they are adding new items to be placed into the hooks from time to time. But that won't revive their housing system that has over 51% houses locked down due to failure to pay upkeep.
If you want to dream on, look here : Announcing LOTRO Total Housing Redesign!
Sorry i didn't bother to read all the replys, but i want to present my solution (sorry if it was already posted).
What i think would work, would be to have dweling disttrict in the city. The whole distric would be instanced multiple times to accomodate many houses. One instance represent one district. Upon entering you choose what district you want to enter. Then there is a place where houses can be build - can be shown off, and looked by other players. In case that player population grows new instances are being created. (as if new districts were build around the city.
Each instance would have some NPC building at the begining to make it more believable and to introduce some shrines, shops and whatnot. Players could also build shops and have npcs rented to work there as clerks.
Howeversome system would be needed to clean the city once in a while from players that are no longer playing. That could be made so you need to pay rent to have your house. You coud pay it with ingame money preferably, and when you do not prolong your rent because you are not logging for months, then the house is rented to someone else, whoever is wiling to pay highest rent.
That could introduce some real estate market (fun!). Probably houses in the earliest districts would be most valuable and prestigious - so the city would have rich districts, poor districts etc.
Depending on a game you would be allowed to tresspass or not into someones house interiors. Or it could be that house interiors are next level of instances, where player can customize them as he wants, and decide who does he invite inside or not.
That would also solve the problem with users not logging in for a long time. Users who are not paing their rent get their house instance unlinked from the rented house, and when they resubscribe and pay rent, their house interiors are rebound to some house that is avaliable at the time. So players wouldnt lose their belongings.
In some more advanced sheme houses could be customized both from inside and outside. Havinf house build extra floors, towers, etc. would create more space in the inside instance.
Ok, i could go like this forever, so i better stop now.
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I'm totally agreeing! It is anchoring people in the world (even if it is only a background scenery to kill mobs in, housing is still "your" space you can influence and interact with beyond that) in my opinion. And those who are attracted by this feature strongest are a special auditory.
In some ways I believe that the Bartle system of achiever, explorer etc. is solid but another system of lets say "customizer/decorator, crafter, grinder, out-maxer, chatter, explorer, dabbler, competitor" is more useful when planning for an auditory.
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Favorites: UO, EQ2, Vanguard, Wurm Online, Salem, ESO, Creativerse
Playing: ESO, Creativerse, Guild Wars 2
Anticipating: (sigh) ... maybe Ashes of Creation
From what I have seen the first MMO to do it right will have a big time home run. A whole lot of people are getting tired of the lazy way most MMOs are developed. Make a map...make some gear....make the people PVP so we don't have to bother with AI etc.
Only to have your personal gear to upgrade is very limiting. There is also a large portion of the playerbase that enjoys crafting and other similar types of things. Being able to have a persistant personal structure in a game that you or others could change and add on to with crafted items and drops etc would be huge for a lot of people. They are tired of grinding for gears and getting ganked all the time.
I am not saying it would be the easiest thing to do, but done correctly and with the right sense of community built in would grab more market share and payoff for the investors. With the flood of online games that are basically gank fests it is soon going to be about impossible to make a profit with that model. Especially because most of us gankers would rather just play an online FPS game to get our headshot fixes.......
when it comes to the construction part of housing i really prefer the idea of 'horizons' (nowadays known as istaria: chronicles of the gifted).
first of all there where a lot of building spots. some formed a village, few were at locations near the higher tier resources and whole islands only for a guild. every week an account could bid on one of the free building spots. the base-amount of ingame gold you have to bid depended on the location and the size of a building spot . if you were lucky you get the spot you wanted. bad system, but nevermind.
once you owned your own building spot you could open the architecture menue and had acess to a lot of building options. over 200 diffrent things you could add to your plot starting with the basis like a house, a blacksmith shop with all the tools for crafting like an anvil, silos to store your resources and ending with decorations like trees, fountains, gardenpaths, hedges and so on. with the architecture menue and window you could place all these things virtualy on your building spot and with the 1 degree rotation option everywhere you like to see it. as long you were in the menue you had a complete view of how your building-ground will look like, when its done. once you were satisfied with your architecture you saved it and ... ups ... no buildings or trees on my ground? only some construction sites?
well, in 'horizons' nearly everthing was playercrafted, even the highest and best equipment, so there were extra crafting schools like mason or carpenter. it took me about 3 months to get my building-ground done. some things i was able to do on my own, but for a lot of things i paid other players with ingame gold for the jobs. and belive me, to 'craft' such a building-ground took a lot of resources.
p.s.: its years ago since i had a view into horizons, so i do not know how actual the informations are.