What Happened to Player Owned Housing?

Glamis · January 2009

What ever happened to this feature? It seems like modern MMOs have totally given up on this. What a shame! I love player owned housing. My wife and I kept our DAoC accounts for at least 6+ months extra solely because of our house.
I wrote a blog post about this recently - focusing mainly on what people want from a player housing system.
<Mod edit>
So what's the deal? Why has this feature disappeared? What would you want from this kind of game feature?

Locklain · January 2009

Player housing is going to die off right along with grouping. The new generation of MMOers would much rather solo their way to cap and then spout off their leet speech while T-bagging a guy they just ganked.

feac · January 2009

i loved housing in doac. and even those that swore they hated housing with a vengence ended up getting one and doing it up

extra storage space and hunting for bits and bobs and tropheys is cool imo a nice way to pass the time inbetween farming mats and raids/pvp

Ilvaldyr · January 2009

I lament the loss of Player Owned Housing too, but I can understand why most games don't bother devoting the time and effort to implementing and maintaining it .. most people just don't really care about the feature.

daarco · January 2009

Originally posted by Locklain

Player housing is going to die off right along with grouping. The new generation of MMOers would much rather solo their way to cap and then spout off their leet speech while T-bagging a guy they just ganked.

What about the old generation? They should earn a game to. And dont the developer get that a 30 year old person have more money then a 13 year old child! Why not make a game for grow ups?

I mean, its the people in thier 30s that made the gaming industry so big in the first place. Why abandon them now?

Kyleran · January 2009

Housing had its pluses and minues. Back in DAOC, it gave players a place to store their stuff, show off some trophy's and craft in private.

But it also took players out of the main game world, and put them in an instance where people no longer saw them.

I think if there was a good way to combine player housing into the main world it might work a bit better.

One thought I had was to put guild halls in the main world, but have individual rooms instanced out of the hall.

That way people see their guildmates when they enter the main hall, but they can retreat to an instance to keep the clutter down in the main world.

For players not in a guild, Inns could be set up where rooms are rented as well.

Oh well, just some ideas I've kicked around, but it seems that it doesn't fit into the plans of most developers today.

dterry · January 2009

Player housing rocks, I certainly hope EVE follows ambulation with housing. As for why the new games don't have it? Maybe SWG can point to an answer... they seem to have issues with ghost towns and are announcing that they are destroying old player housing. Although I think a simple fix would be that you lose the location of your house as soon as you let your subscription lapse... if you ever re-sub you would just have to find a new location in the world to place it.

Locklain · January 2009

Originally posted by Kyleran

Housing had its pluses and minues. Back in DAOC, it gave players a place to store their stuff, show off some trophy's and craft in private.
But it also took players out of the main game world, and put them in an instance where people no longer saw them.
I think if there was a good way to combine player housing into the main world it might work a bit better.
One thought I had was to put guild halls in the main world, but have individual rooms instanced out of the hall.
That way people see their guildmates when they enter the main hall, but they can retreat to an instance to keep the clutter down in the main world.
For players not in a guild, Inns could be set up where rooms are rented as well.
Oh well, just some ideas I've kicked around, but it seems that it doesn't fit into the plans of most developers today.

Why not have a main town with housing much like Vanguard's all around it? Players could make their very own suburbs and it wouldn't take them entirely away from the world.

Midnitte · January 2009

I think SWG's system was amazing, perhaps have a tax which would stop things such as dead cities from littering the game?

JestorRodo · January 2009

SWG housing = today RL housing , Abandoned

LOTRO housing instance driven - much bettter

Its ok though , I live in a real house so having a VR one would just be more work.

Locklain · January 2009

Originally posted by JestorRodo

SWG housing = today RL housing , Abandoned
LOTRO housing instance driven - much bettter

Its ok though , I live in a real house so having a VR one would just be more work.

Now you are just being a humbug. Just because their is housing implemented doesn't mean you have to use it. I for one loved sitting in my house in DAoC to craft and watch people wander around inside. It was nice when people popped in and started a conversation as well.

JestorRodo · January 2009

Originally posted by Locklain

Originally posted by JestorRodo

SWG housing = today RL housing , Abandoned
LOTRO housing instance driven - much bettter

Its ok though , I live in a real house so having a VR one would just be more work.

Now you are just being a humbug. Just because their is housing implemented doesn't mean you have to use it. I for one loved sitting in my house in DAoC to craft and watch people wander around inside. It was nice when people popped in and started a conversation as well.

That is all fine and well if you are an Interior Designer ( Not that there is anything wrong with that - )

Locklain · January 2009

Haha, interior decor is not my strong suit for sure. The more stuff you have on the wall just equates into my stuff you have to clean.

Teganx · January 2009

Final Fnatasy XI

Everquest 2

Lord of the Rings Online

Vanguard

all have it and they are all decent.

Honos · January 2009

Originally posted by Kyleran

Housing had its pluses and minues. Back in DAOC, it gave players a place to store their stuff, show off some trophy's and craft in private.
But it also took players out of the main game world, and put them in an instance where people no longer saw them.
I think if there was a good way to combine player housing into the main world it might work a bit better.
One thought I had was to put guild halls in the main world, but have individual rooms instanced out of the hall.
That way people see their guildmates when they enter the main hall, but they can retreat to an instance to keep the clutter down in the main world.
For players not in a guild, Inns could be set up where rooms are rented as well.
Oh well, just some ideas I've kicked around, but it seems that it doesn't fit into the plans of most developers today.

I agree MMO's need player housing again. The above quote is how I think it should be implemented.

Scottgun · January 2009

Other than Puzzle Pirates (which is debateable whether it counts), my only experience with housing has been Lord of the Rings Oline, and it was disappointing to say the least. It's nice to have a place to stash your extra shizzle, but you can do that without housing. Instead we get these generated neighborhoods that seem like a ghost town and are out of the way from the social interaction. If you had the house next to the Prancing Pony in Bree, now that would be something. But of course everyone would scream about the unfairness of it.

Meanwhile, I think many MMO's are overlooking the obvious: make all the taverns we find in these MMO's actual functioning taverns with card games, drinking games, etc between player characters, as opposed to just this place where you pick up the odd mission and buy supplies.

Kyleran · January 2009

Originally posted by Locklain

Originally posted by Kyleran

Housing had its pluses and minues. Back in DAOC, it gave players a place to store their stuff, show off some trophy's and craft in private.
But it also took players out of the main game world, and put them in an instance where people no longer saw them.
I think if there was a good way to combine player housing into the main world it might work a bit better.
One thought I had was to put guild halls in the main world, but have individual rooms instanced out of the hall.
That way people see their guildmates when they enter the main hall, but they can retreat to an instance to keep the clutter down in the main world.
For players not in a guild, Inns could be set up where rooms are rented as well.
Oh well, just some ideas I've kicked around, but it seems that it doesn't fit into the plans of most developers today.

Why not have a main town with housing much like Vanguard's all around it? Players could make their very own suburbs and it wouldn't take them entirely away from the world.

It might work out fine. When I played VG it was in the first month or two and few people could afford an individual house (they should be easy to get IMO) and the guild houese were few and far between.

I saw all the lots everywhere, but with no houses on them I never got a sense of what they might have been.

Dinidain · January 2009

I currently play LOTRO and have a nice house with fishing trophies and animal trophies and furniture and extra storage chests in an instanced neighborhood just southeast of Bree... No crafting stations though, probably to avoid the disappearance of crafters from the open world like happened in DAoC when Foundations introduced Housing there (I was there on that day also, camping a lot stone and waiting for the price to drop enough to buy it, griping like everyone else about how incredibly high the price was compared to what it had been on the test server LOL)

I also had houses in SWG. I lived on Talus for awhile, then packed up and moved to Naboo, then again to Dantooine, and finally was living on Rori when the NGE ended that game for me. Open world housing was nice, but there was always the danger of the wiseguys that would drop their house right in front of your "great view" that you spent hours searching for before dropping your deed. Or putting up a cantina right in the middle of one of the racetrack courses, just cuz they got a kick out of making everyone's time trials go up...

I think a good solution to the question of instanced vs. open placement player housing was achieved in Horizons:Empire of Istaria (Not sure what it's called nowadays, I think just Istaria).

Players could purchase "lots" in pre-planned "player towns" located around the open world. The beauty of the "lot" system was that when a player purchased the lot they could then enter a special interface to "plan" how their lot was developed. Depending on the size of the lot you purchased you could place a house, or work buildings for you crafting like a smith's forge, or a tailor's loom and sewing tables, or a sawmill and woodworking benches, or whatever you had the room to place. You could also place your own consignment shop (complete with a vendor), extra storage silos, or simply fountains and arbors and lamps and gardens.

Once you had the lot "planned" then you went about building it, gathering and processing the resources needed to create each structure. Or you could place money into each construction project, as much coin per unit of resource required for it to be built that you wished to offer, and then any wandering crafter or artisan could stop by your lot, place some resources into your construction projects and get paid for their work.

It was amazing.

Way back then (2004) the downside was that as far as the actual housing was concerned once it was placed and built that was it, there wasn't anymore decorating you could do. No open drop and move decorating like in SWG, no "location hook" based decorating like LOTRO, nor even any hybrid of the two decorating systems like DAoC. Not sure if they ever changed that in Horizons, but it was a downside to what was a great concept (like many of the other great concepts in that game that IMO came up just a tad short.)

I truly wish that someday a game development company will set down and look back at some of these features tried previously and see about morphing them. Something like an open world lot system, with player BUILT housing and ameneties that still allow for customization and re-decoration after construction is complete, and crafting stations and player stores that keep the crafter and their wares accessible in the open world. It's a dream, I know, but still...

Glamis · January 2009

Originally posted by Locklain

Player housing is going to die off right along with grouping. The new generation of MMOers would much rather solo their way to cap and then spout off their leet speech while T-bagging a guy they just ganked.

That's funny but sad. I hope the cynical outlook does not turn out to be the reality.

Housing lets people feel like they own a place in the world. It also gives the developers so many options for item rewards and content. Your house is like another big character to gear up and decorate!

Wizardry · January 2009

I think you are going to see less and less content in games as they appear to moving the easier route.The develoeprs seem to think they will succeed with the simplistic PVP idea,they just make their world,some gear and let the players go at it,takes less effort to design a game like that.These developers are also using very weak niche ideas like mounts or players tha tcan fly,so you have PVP and niche ideas,they are banking that will bring in the massive subs and have them stick around for a long time,i see it failing but let them learn the hard way.Housing is a good idea i know many enjoy it,how VG went even further they tried SHIP building,there is so many other content ideas that can be brought into games.How about games that advance in technology every so many years?liek maybe yo ucan build aeroplanes or flying objects,then space travel,this allows a game to ever evolve and allows the conmtent to never end,eliminating the so called END GAME boredom.

GoldenDog · January 2009

I had a deluxe house in LoTRO and it was nice for about a month. It had a glitch in it where someone could get stuck and I could pretend I was the guy from Silence of the Lambs...

However after my subscription lapsed (the first time), I lost everything inside of it including the 7+ gold it cost to purchase. When I reactivated I decided I was just as well off living in a van down by the river... seeing as how rarely anyone visited, I'd rather spend my online time smooshing trolls.

Since that experience, I'm not too keen on the idea of housing. It appears to me as more of a time/money sink than anything else. That's the impression i received from the LoTRO system anyhow.

I wouldn't be against it if they provided a player buff like the clan halls in Lineage II, but I don't personally see much of a point if it doesn't provide a benefit towards character advancement. Guess I'm an overachiever and always feeling a need to progress :P

beauturkey · January 2009

Here's my old one in vanguard:

http://www.gaxonline.com/video/1511077:Video:96356

Housing is still out there, in most games (save for Vanguard, SWG and a few others) it is instanced.

Beau

Abrahmm · January 2009

I agree, player housing is an awesome feature and should be in every MMO. SWG's player housing would have been perfect if SOE would have simply implemented an auto-house packup if your account was inactive for more than a month. Then there would have been no problem with ghost towns.

But alas, I don't see player housing coming back in a strong way anytime soon. MMO's are turning more into single player online games and less into online virtual worlds like they should be.

Teiman · January 2009

I am pro-open world housing.

One problem os MMO's is that the world is static. There are lots of people ... potential creativity, but is lost because people can't change the mmo that are playing. A good design sould let people ADD features to the game, and avoid problems like these of SWG.

Kelathos · January 2009

Houses don’t drop off raid bosses, that’s their modern problem.

Seriously though, housing goes along with the concept of creating things in the world, and having the players shape it as they see fit. It’s part of the Sandbox model, not the grinder model.

Netzoko · January 2009

Housing died around the same time MMORPG began to mean "Theme park level/gear grind."

Believe it or not, MMOs used to be worlds, not stupid solo adventure games solely based around combat.

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What Happened to Player Owned Housing?

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What Happened to Player Owned Housing?

Comments

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV